School children, homemakers, business people, and graduate students can all benefit from the advent of the double-sided card. Previously, if a person wanted to harness the power and productivity of computers to produce large quantities of neat and legible cards with information printed on both sides of the card, he or she would be constrained from optimal productivity and efficiency in producing double-sided cards by the need to reverse the cards through the printer and align the corresponding information from the front to the newly printed information on the back. This cumbersome process dissuades many individuals from even attempting to produce double-sided cards. Numerous card users have been ignored and their work made more difficult and inefficient. For example, students could not print double-sided flash cards from computer databases to use as study aids. Homemakers were restricted in the length of recipes to those that could only be readily printed on single sided cards. Business people could not effectively print daily schedules for appointment books on double-sided sheets. School children developing personalized books for themselves were restricted to using single sides of a page. U.S. Pat. No. 5,100,326 illustrates the need for double-sided cards as study aids although it does not suggest how a person can produce his or her own cards, in large quantities, neatly and legibly, using mechanical printing devices.
The invention being presented will mitigate all the problems and inefficiencies associated with the printing of information by computer printers and other single surface printing devices. With the double-sided cards incorporated into a continuous feed web (for dot matrix, daisy wheel, thermal label printers, as well as other devices) and in single sheets for laser printers, the user merely prints whatever data necessary on the two printing surfaces. The user then separates the double-sided card from the delivery mechanism (continuous web, sheet of paper, other scrolling mechanism). The release coated surfaces on the back of both printing faces are then removed to expose the adhesive. The double-sided card is subsequently folded along a score line so that the adhesive backs adhere to each other and maintain the double-sided card structure. The user then has a card with the chosen information depicted on both sides of the same card. This simple process can be easily repeated to produce large quantities of double-sided cards for any purpose.
Presently, there is no existing method by which cards, or any other form of sheet paper, can accommodate indelible printing, from a continuous feed computer printer or a single feed laser printer, on both sides of the same card or sheet. Accomplishing double-sided printing, under present constraints, requires the flipping and refeeding of the already printed cards or sheets, alignment of the information to be printed so that it conforms with the complimentary data on the opposite printed side, and a relatively heavy card or paper stock so that the printing does not show through to the other side. These are cumbersome and technically inefficient tasks. The utility of the double sided printing capability provided by this invention is that it allows for additional storage of information on a singular card or sheet, and it also allows greater flexibility and efficiency in the utilization of cards or sheets of paper, while overcoming the burdens and technical problems of manually reversing the existing continuous feed or single feed cards and sheets, to achieve double-sided printing capability.
The present invention provides a computer printable double-sided reference card which allows the user to print on successive cards, detach the complimentary portions as a whole from the continuous feed web or the single sheet, remove the release coated surface covering the pressure sensitive adhesive on the back of the cards, and fold them onto themselves, thus providing interrelated information on a double-sided card. The invention can be manufactured at a low price using existing technology and processes. The low cost would allow for wide dissemination of the cards to schools, students, offices, and homes.
The double-sided cards can be manufactured by applying an adhesive to the back of continuous web index cards. Thus, every two individual index cards would comprise the entirety of a double-sided card. If the adhesive were pressure sensitive, it would be covered by a release coated surface. In the single sheet format, a sheet of card stock would be perforated to outline the boundaries of the double-sided card. The adhesive would be applied to the designated back of the sheet and a release coated surface applied as needed. To form the double-sided card after applying the printed matter, the user would tear out the card along the perforations, expose the adhesive, and fold the adhesive surfaces onto themselves.